


Rubicon

by croptopyeonbin



Series: Crossings [1]
Category: TOMORROW X TOGETHER | TXT (Korea Band)
Genre: Attempted Murder, M/M, Married Spies, Mentions of Sex, Mentions of Violence, Mr. and Mrs. Smith AU, there's a big fight scene with guns and knives and hand-to-hand combat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-18 18:40:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29122785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/croptopyeonbin/pseuds/croptopyeonbin
Summary: "That's a big gun,” said Soobin, lining up his rifle. "Too bad mine's bigger."Yeonjun laughed. The part of him that loved bad jokes was delighted. "You know size isn't everything, don't you, honey? After four years of marriage, I certainly do.""Please. As if I've ever left you unsatisfied."A bullet lodged itself into the cabinet behind where Yeonjun's head was half a second ago. “Acting is most of my job, baby. And you bet I’m good at it,” Yeonjun yelled, dodging into their kitchen with a forward roll.“I’m a good actor too,” Soobin called out. “Bet you never knew I hated your cooking, did you?”“Motherfucker.” Yeonjun’s arm shot up to grab one of his chef knives. They were an anniversary present from last year; the irony was not lost on him.
Relationships: Choi Soobin/Choi Yeonjun
Series: Crossings [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2206170
Comments: 51
Kudos: 246
Collections: TOMORROW X TOGETHER BIGBANG: 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hello after reveals :)

Yeonjun woke first, to that particular stale scent of a four star hotel room. 

By habit he did a mental assessment from head to toe before his eyes were even open: all limbs were in normal condition; average indoor body temperature; slightly elevated resting heart rate. Nothing out of the ordinary except a deep, pleasant ache between his legs. It would hurt when he flexed for a few days, he thought with relish. 

His mind ticked forward like a well-tuned machine.

The hotel room had three exits. There was the door out to the hall, with the emergency staircase four meters to the left at the end of the corridor. There was also the big window with a fantastic view of the Szechenyi Bridge stretching its long steel body across the Danube. Second floor, as usual, so Yeonjun could handle a jump down to the street if he needed to. Lastly, the old air duct above the bathtub which he could reach if he–

Soobin sighed in his sleep. Yeonjun turned over to look at him. It had been a long time since he’d let someone fuck him, especially on an assignment. Unnecessary risk avoidance was tradecraft 101. 

But the unfamiliarity of it, of Soobin, had been thrilling rather than unnerving last night. When one first learns a game, playing by the rules is critical. But Yeonjun being Yeonjun meant knowing when to break the rules. Sometimes for survival. And sometimes just for fun.Soobin had gorgeous dimples and big hands and a low voice which was hard to hear in the crowded bar at Szimpla Kert. He’d said yes easily to a walk outside, and they’d taken a tipsy, giggly lap around the old fashionably crumbling Jewish Quarter until Yeonjun had had enough and backed him up against a brick wall, speaking insistently with his tongue. 

Soobin’s lashes weren’t long but they were inky dark, like lines left behind by a calligrapher whose brush lingered too long. They parted with a flutter around deep eyes. 

“Good morning,” said Yeonjun. 

“Hi. You were staring.” Rough morning voice. Delicious. 

“You’re nice to stare at.” 

Soobin rolled over onto his back, stretching. Fully extended, his limbs were too much to be contained by the bed. It wasn’t _that_ kind of mission, so they had only booked Yeonjun a small double. 

“What time is it?” Soobin asked, sitting up. His hair was loose and floppy, his under-eyes a bit puffy in the morning light. He had the familiar look of a college student emerging from the depths of a jungle juice-fueled night in some rival frat house. Yeonjun remembered those days well. 

“Time for breakfast, I think.” He slid out of bed and slung on the fluffy hotel bathrobe left on the chair beside the bed. Parting the curtains, Yeonjun could see that the city outside was sparse with people. Overnight snowfall coated the cobblestones, making for a picturesque winter scene. “I don’t know if the Christmas markets will still open, given last night, but we could always try the one in front of the basilica.” 

“Oh, last night.” Soobin rubbed the back of his neck, squinting against the light coming in through the open curtains. “What happened? A few people in the bar were talking about it.”

Yeonjun didn’t often tell the truth to strangers on assignment, but this time there wasn’t much danger in admitting some partial-truths. “I’m not sure. Some kind of explosion by Fisherman’s Bastion.” It had been a rare shock to him. If Yeonjun had been much closer to his mark he would’ve been blown to bits of flesh on the sidewalk. The vehicle fire was massive, quickly engulfing two nearby buildings. Due to hordes of seasonal visitors in the area, the authorities were delayed on scene. That was according to Comms, anyway. By then Yeonjun had slipped across the river to the Pest side of the city, looking for a place to lay low until he learned more. Always easiest to hide out in a bar with lots of drunk tourists. “Doesn’t look like there’s much trouble now, though,” he continued cheerfully, turning back to the bed. Until HQ learned more and gave him a redirect, Yeonjun had nothing better to do than enjoy present company. 

Soobin was smiling. “No trouble at all.” He lifted up the corner of the comforter, inviting. 

Yeonjun laughed, slinking back into the bed. “Aren’t you hungry?”

“Yeah.” Soobin’s hands, cold, slid inside his robe. “Ravenous.”

That night, the market was up in front of St. Stephen’s as Yeonjun thought it might be, though not many people milled about. All the better– no waiting in line for hot spiced wine and stacks of chimney cakes, steaming in the cold air. Huddled side by side on an icy bench, snow falling into their hair, Yeonjun told this almost-stranger things he’d never told another person before. 

But nothing Soobin didn’t need to know, of course. 

Things Yeonjun learned very quickly: 

Soobin was a year younger than him. An East Coast boy out of Columbia, _summa cum laude_ in chem e. Then, a Wharton MBA acquired while doing summer rotations at Exxon. Now he worked as an offshore rig systems supervisor for some multinational conglomerate. Lots of midnight calls and frequent out-of-town trips, many of them to some remote site in the middle of the ocean with nonexistent cell signal, he’d explained to Yeonjun. 

In a word, perfect. And perfect rarely happened in his world. 

“So,” Wooyoung grunted from behind the pads in between punches. “Your relationship is based on… never being around one another?” 

Left, left, uppercut. Yeonjun could feel his headband slowly sliding off his sweaty hair. “Not, like, total absence. Just, you know, he gets it. Right? He’s super busy, I’m super busy. He doesn’t make a fuss about my schedule.” 

“That sounds nice. Right hook now, Jun.” 

Changbin interrupted, “Drop your left shoulder a bit, you’ll hit harder.” 

“I don’t need him to hit harder,” yelped Wooyoung. 

“He sounds convenient,” said San, standing on the sidelines and adjusting tape over his knuckles. “But why marry the guy? You could just… you know. _You know_.” 

Yeonjun did know. He’d done that for a long time and it was no longer what he wanted.

“He makes a lot of money. He’s not embarrassing to bring out, and he looks good in a suit. Which he’s always wearing, by the way, because his work is crazy uptight, and I’m not complaining,” Yeonjun said, fumbling through a response. “He remembers my favorite flavor of cupcake, and which flowers make me sneeze. And he’s like, ridiculously good at giving Swedish massages. It’s those big mitts, I guess. Loves plants maybe a bit too much but it’s fine. Total scaredy-cat about horror movies, but he’ll watch them with me if I ask nicely. Weird fixation on Bebe Rexha.”

Wooyoung, San, and Changbin were staring at him. 

“Also, he’s great in the sack,” Yeonjun finished definitively. That was a reason anybody could understand, right?

Their newlywed bungalow was a 2 bedroom, 2 bath in Redondo Beach, the down payment coming from their freshly minted joint account. Yeonjun’s commute to the office was soul-sucking but, as an LA native, he had long ago learned to make his peace with traffic. Anyway, it was worth it to be so close to the ocean. In the mornings he swam out for nearly an hour before coming back in to shower, jam a piece of buttered toast into his mouth, and then rocket away in his baby, an Audi R8 with painstakingly selected tango red metallic exterior and palomino leather trim; if he had to stomach a daily vehicular odyssey, at least he could enjoy the time spent behind the wheel.

Soobin could work from anywhere as long as his laptop or phone was able to download the hourly systems updates from the rigs. He abhorred driving, and had a home office set up in the room that got the most natural light, which he quickly filled with a baffling number of plants. Sometimes he drove in to the satellite office downtown for stagegate meetings and other corporate occasions. 

But equally often, he was away from home entirely. Not quite as often as Yeonjun himself, but frequently enough that it was felt. 

Yeonjun snatched up his phone as soon as it buzzed. “Soobin? Babe?” 

“Hi.” There was a lot of impatient background noise, wheels on laminate flooring and cars honking. “Sorry, we were circling above Culver City for ages. But I just got my luggage.” 

“Okay. Good.” Yeonjun eyed the clock above the oven. “So… forty-five minutes?” 

“Yeah.” A pause. “I can’t wait to see you.” 

Soobin was doing that thing where his voice got all deep and earnest. Yeonjun went still and his stomach did a weird swoop. He had just spent two weeks in Kuala Lumpur when Soobin was called away to some emergency on an FLNG in the Baltic Sea. They hadn’t seen each other in over a month, and it was the longest time they’d been apart since the wedding. Yeonjun had been living day-to-day, trying not to miss him too much.

Stupid. 

“Get back here safe?” he said.

“Yeah, I will.” 

Yeonjun had half an hour to sear the steaks and mash up their watermelon mint juleps. Then he dashed into the closet to throw off his ratty UC Berkeley tee for a creamy linen shirt with mother-of-pearl buttons, and the white slacks that made his ass look like something painstakingly carved by Bernini. In Budapest, Soobin had mentioned spending dreamy summer vacations on Fishers Island. Tennis lessons and clam bakes and seaside socials with Exeter boys and Brearley girls. Yeonjun wanted to conjure up the image of a sailing instructor, young and eager for a warm-weather fling. 

He was just setting the table on their back patio when Soobin slid open the glass door. Yeonjun stared. He was a vision even in slouchy airport clothes. No oversized athleisurewear could disguise his height, or the cut of his torso beneath the performance tech fabric. 

“Oh. I didn’t hear you come in,” Yeonjun said. He was not a man easily surprised, or rendered dumb. 

Soobin smiled, bringing out his dimples. (Unfair.) “I can be sneaky.” 

Yeonjun leaned back against the edge of the table, biting his bottom lip. They both liked when he did that.

When Soobin drew them together, Yeonjun sighed and closed his eyes. Soobin fingered the pearly buttons with interest, then pulled the bottom of Yeonjun’s shirt out from where it tucked into his jeans; his fingers skimmed up underneath to pinch both nipples at once. 

“Hey!” Yeonjun yelped with undisguised delight. “Dinner is going to get cold.” 

Soobin dropped his head down to nose down Yeonjun’s neck. "Forget dinner. _You’re_ dinner."

"So,” Yeonjun purred, feeling triumphant. The steaks could be gently reheated after, he supposed. His hand came up to pull at the blunt hairs on the back of Soobin’s head until he hissed and let out a groan. “Don't play with your food, then."

It happens bit by bit. 

Soobin had not looked up from his laptop in two hours. 

Yeonjun tapped his spatula against the counter sporadically, staring at his husband through the glass door separating their kitchen from the home office. Their guests would start arriving in about an hour, and despite assurances that he would take care of it, Soobin hadn’t picked up the cake from the bakery yet or set out the extra tables and chairs needed to accommodate everyone. 

It was going to be a very full house. In addition to some neighbors, a few of their respective college friends would be coming. Colleagues too, and this part made Yeonjun more nervous than anything because while he trusted Wooyoung with his life when it came to spotting snipers, trusting him not to slip up about work around his husband was another thing… 

Speaking of. 

Yeonjun’s domain was the kitchen because he loved to cook, and Soobin was content to handle everything else around the house when he could. It wasn’t like he shirked from it either; Yeonjun didn’t know anybody else who washed dishes and did laundry as cheerfully as Soobin, but still. Sometimes Yeonjun thought it would be nice not to have to ask him. 

“Honey?” he called out. “Are you… you know. Gonna go get the cake anytime soon?” 

“Yup,” said Soobin. Not getting up from his desk. His right hand was moving the mouse rapidly, clickety clack. 

Yeonjun scowled. Soobin hadn’t been himself since he came back from Jordan a few days ago. Something about having lost out on a contract bid to a big competitor. Each of their projects were billed at hundreds of millions of dollars, so it was a huge blow to the company. 

It wasn’t as though Yeonjun didn’t understand having a demanding job. Hell, he had toppled a fledgling dictatorship in Papua New Guinea just last month. Career disappointments happened, but life moved on. (Usually. Though not always, in Yeonjun’s line of work.) 

“Soobin! People are going to be here, like, pretty soon. And there’s still a lot to do!” 

Finally, Soobin looked up. He had a frown of his own now, and it surprised Yeonjun just how unfamiliar his husband’s features were when rearranged that way. 

“I said I would handle it, didn’t I? I know what time it is.”

Yeonjun bristled. 

He drew on all that made him one of the best mercenaries in this hemisphere to turn back to the oven and check on his famed taco casserole, lips pursed. Nothing good comes of throttling your husband right before a big party, he reminded himself with gritted teeth. After a couple minutes of furiously stirring his equally good stovetop mac and cheese, Yeonjun heard the office door open and Soobin’s characteristic socked shuffle across the house to the garage. When the sounds of Soobin’s BMW X6 pulled out of the driveway and down the street, Yeonjun felt a tiny prickle up his spine. 

Over the years he had learned to listen to that feeling. 

Soobin’s desk was cluttered but Yeonjun could sense a sort of subjective order to it. His eyes scanned lightly over the stacks of blocked grid paper with various engineering drawings. There were lots of birds-eye and split level structural models with labels like “semi-submersible platform” and “compliant tower mooring lines'' in Soobin’s handwriting. Yeonjun eyed the laptop. It was standard corporate issue, a boring Lenovo that could juggle eighteen macro-ed up Excel windows without crashing but not a single video game, not even Candy Crush (learned the hard way, unfortunately). 

Yeonjun closed the office door and went back to the kitchen. The oven beeped; his casserole was done. 

When their guests began to arrive, they came in a flood. Seokjin swanned in first, armed with a bottle of good wine and rapidfire puns (all bad). Mingi knocked over the vase in the hallway pretty much immediately after entering, though Taehyun caught it before anything broke. They filled the house with deafening laughter and descended upon the snack trays like locusts swarming a virgin wheat field. 

In other words, an excellent start to a summer evening party. 

Soobin returned just as Yeonjun had settled most of their friends with cocktails. He placed the cake box on the kitchen island and, his bad mood seemingly gone, landed a chaste kiss on Yeonjun’s cheek. Then, eyes alighting on Namjoon, drew him into his office/makeshift arboretum for a spirited discussion on succulent propagation techniques. He’d been sorely disappointed with his jade plant cuttings, Yeonjun knew; Namjoon looked sympathetically at his sad little rootless leaves in their planter. 

Dinner was a splendid, chaotic affair. Everyone knew at least a few others, and the entire guest list had met briefly at their wedding. Jungkook and Jongho belted out song requests at opposite ends of the table, while Hongjoong and Yoongi seriously debated the merits of different cat breeds. Yunho and Taehyung bet the last scoop of guacamole on who had the bigger hand size (Kai swooped in and ate it while they were too busy comparing). 

Yeonjun was feeling wonderful as he went to get dessert. The cake was a multilayered lemon and taro cream creation, custom-made. As he set it in the middle of the table, the glazed words on its surface caught the evening light beautifully: 

**_HAPPY 1st ANNIVERSARY_ **

**_Mr. & Mr. Choi_ **

After everyone had been served a piece, Wooyoung wobbled to his feet; Jimin had been mixing killer margaritas all evening and nobody was entirely unscathed.

“I feel I should make a toast!” Wooyoung declared grandly.

“Aren’t the not-so-newlyweds supposed to toast?” asked Beomgyu, chewing on a paper drinks umbrella. 

“Anybody can toast,” Seonghwa said encouragingly. 

Wooyoung raised his glass; there was a bit of ground beef floating in it. “I want to say congratulations to my best friend,” he beamed. “Yeonjunie, who would’ve known, hmm? I’m _so happy_ for you. When you first told me you met someone new, I was worried but I didn’t need to be. Soobin is so good for you.” 

Yeonjun glanced at Soobin on the other side of the table. He was looking back at him, with a tiny flicker in his eyes. Yeonjun smiled, letting it warm him. He felt his earlier frustration melt away through a sieve of alcohol, good food, and good company.

“I couldn’t believe it at first,” Wooyoung continued. “Yeonjun—reformed!” 

“ _Domesticated_ ,” San hissed in a stage whisper. 

A tither of giggles went up around the table. 

Wooyoung nodded. “Soobin’s the best, seriously. You wouldn’t believe the kind of guys Yeonjun used to go for when we were in school.” 

“Oh? What kind?” Soobin asked. Too casual. 

“Geezers,” offered Changbin blankly. 

“And the richer, the better,” Wooyoung corroborated, swaying on his feet. 

San was twirling his fork back and forth between his fingers. “Yeonjun has a great eye for people like that. Ah, the parties we used to throw with the money he got pawning the gifts from them… jewelry, mostly.”

“Those were the days,” sighed Changbin. “So much beer for a bracelet.”

“Oh, how fun!” chirped Hoseok. “I do enjoy a good party on someone else’s dime. So convenient.” 

“That’s the way to do it,” Yeosang agreed silkily. 

Yeonjun felt an awkward chuckle bubbling up his throat. Soobin had started playing with his earlobe, which he did whenever he was thinking deeply but quickly. He was still smiling. 

“How’s the cake?” Yeonjun asked the table at large, loudly. “Very good, isn’t it? That nice guy at Slow Rabbit Bakery made it custom for us, you wouldn’t believe how many pounds of taro we had to buy to test the cream filling—“

Renewed mention of the cake sparked a drunken gladiatorial showdown for the last few pieces and successfully diverted conversation away from Yeonjun’s less than savory college hijinks. And when Hongjoong and Namjoon had to help Mingi and Beomgyu up off the grass after they nearly fell into Soobin’s beloved hydrangeas, Soobin just laughed easily, composure back in place, and started ordering rides on his phone for everybody. 

Yeonjun left his husband to wrangle their guests on the driveway, helping everyone to stay upright as they waited for their Lyfts to arrive. He herded Wooyoung, San, and Changbin into their little guest restroom, glaring as he pulled the door closed behind them.

“Listen,” he hissed, poking a finger into Wooyoung’s chest. “What did you do that for? Now my husband thinks I’m a gold-digging skank, oh my god. Or– was, anyway. Maybe.” 

Wooyoung gave him a loopy smile, then burped in his face. 

“This is _very nice_ , Yeonjun,” said Changbin conversationally as he pressed down on the soap dispenser, squirting glob after glob of pink Rose Turkish Delight into the sink. “Did you get this during the last Bath and Body Works semi-annual sale?”

Yeonjun snatched the soap bottle out of his hands. “The Grand Bazaar in Istanbul,” he replied in horror, watching as half the contents of the bottle slid slowly down the drain. 

“Doesn’t Soobin already know?” asked San. “We thought he knew. He seems like he’d be good with secrets!” 

“No! Soobin doesn’t know about any of that! And he _definitely_ doesn’t know what we do for a living. He’s–” Yeonjun stopped short and thought about it. There were a great many things he never told Soobin, out of dire professional necessity, but that didn’t cover all of it. Not nearly. “I didn’t want him to know. He’s not like us and he wouldn’t— what are you doing? San, stop unbuttoning your shirt!” 

“It’s getting too hot in here!” San whined. He sat down on the toilet seat. “The four of us crammed into your tiny bathroom? And Changbin’s _margarita breath—_ ”

Wooyoung agreed and started on the buttons in the center of his shirt until Yeonjun slapped his hands down. 

A sharp rap on the door. 

“Yeonjun, are you in there?” Soobin asked politely, rhetorically, from the other side. 

Yeonjun flung open the door.

Soobin’s eyes made a quick circuit from the four of their faces to the undone shirts. “I’m sorry to rush you,” he said, “but the drivers are getting impatient out front.”

“No, you’re an angel. We were just dealing with some wardrobe malfunctions.” 

Yeonjun shooed them. Sheepishly, they trudged out front and Yeonjun put each of them into their rides, dodging a mushy kiss from Wooyoung and taking back the embroidered hand towel that Changbin had not so sneakily tried to stuff into his jeans pocket.

When he returned to the house, Soobin was already rinsing plates and filling up the dishwasher. Yeonjun went to him, winding his arms around that lovely little waist and putting his nose into the back of Soobin’s hair. 

“Why don’t you go relax in the bath?” Soobin suggested lightly. “You worked so hard today. Let me finish up out here.” 

Yeonjun paused. It wasn’t like Soobin to turn down a little pre-bedtime necking. “Okay,” he agreed. 

In the tub Yeonjun cleaned himself thoroughly, especially down there. He wanted to try again. Maybe some special anniversary activities would be just the thing to put the evening back the right way. Freshly scrubbed and smelling like orange blossoms, he padded back into their bedroom.

Soobin was propped up against the pillows, reading a book. Yeonjun slid in next to him, resting his chin on Soobin’s shoulder. Before he could see what the book was, Soobin closed it and set it aside. He sunk down to lay flat, pulling up the covers and leaving Yeonjun to lean against the headboard instead. 

“Honey, can you get the light?” Soobin asked.

“Are you mad at me?” Yeonjun asked in return, not reaching for the lamp. 

“What? No.” Soobin rubbed his eyes. “Why would I be mad at you?”

Yeonjun fingered the top edge of their comforter. “You know, I was just a dumb kid in school. It didn’t mean anything. I was just amusing myself, because I could.” And, testing his own proclivities for intelligence work. You know, subterfuge. Seduction. The usual extracurriculars for those in his professional circle.

A small pause. “I know that,” said Soobin. 

“I’m not proud of it, is what I’m saying.” 

“I know that, too.” Soobin looked tired in the low lamplight. He adored their friends but tonight had been a big ordeal. Not for the first time, Yeonjun wondered if they should’ve just had a quiet dinner at home, or at one of their favorite local spots. Romantic moonlit walk on the beach. Some perfectly satisfying, familiar sex before bed. “We’ve all done things that we’re not proud of,” Soobin continued. He was looking at Yeonjun now, his under-eyes already a little puffy.

“Yeah. Okay. So… we’re okay?” 

“You did so well tonight,” Soobin said, which was not an answer. But he took Yeonjun’s hand in his, squeezing. “Everyone had a great time. Thank you.” 

Yeonjun sank down to lay next to him. “Soobin. I love you.” 

“I love you too,” Soobin responded, eyes already closed. 

Yeonjun rolled over and pulled down the lamp cord with the hand not holding Soobin’s. Into the dark, he whispered, “Happy anniversary, baby.” 

In the morning when he blinked awake and turned off his alarm with a smack, Yeonjun was alone in bed. He sat up slowly, already thinking of the hangover cure he’d need to drink before being able to do anything useful for the day. Rubbing and twisting his neck, Yeonjun caught a glance at something on Soobin’s nightstand. 

It was a little pair of origami animals, a rabbit and a duck. They were sitting on the book he must’ve been reading last night. _Anna Karenina_ , Yeonjun could see it was now, to his surprise. There was a bit of angular paper sticking out of the book’s inside cover. Yeonjun pulled it free to read Soobin’s round, neat scrawl. 

_Got a call at 3 AM about an emergency pipeline rupture off the Seychelles._

_I’ll be in the air by the time your alarm rings._

_Sorry, didn’t want to wake you. Will call when I land._

_Paper is the gift for first anniversaries, right?_

Yeonjun flopped back against the bed. His head fell on Soobin’s pillow; he turned his face against it and inhaled deeply. It smelled like their shampoo but also of that deep, musky note that was just Soobin. In that moment Yeonjun ached with already missing him, so much that he could’ve teared up. Might have, if he were a different person. 

Instead he gave it a minute before forcing himself back to a sit. He thought of the things they didn’t say to each other, the things couples should but couldn’t. Everyone said they had married young. Not in admonishment, really, but in surprise. It had surprised Yeonjun, too. 

He swung his feet off his husband’s side of the bed and got up for work.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, this chapter contains a big but non-graphic action sequence featuring the use of multiple guns, a razor, a serrated knife, and hand-to-hand combat. Also, attempted murder. No one gets more than a few cuts and bruises, but please only continue if you are okay with all the above!

( _a few years later_ )

Yeonjun wove between soggy clumps of tourists as he crossed Trafalgar Square at a quick clip. Above, the clouds looked swollen and heavy, threatening more rain. He pulled his grey peacoat tighter around himself, ducking around umbrellas being opened on the steps of the National Portrait Gallery. 

Inside, the museum was crowded with people trying to stay out of the wet and damp for a little while. Yeonjun grabbed a map and used it to maneuver himself to the salon set up for the John Singer Sargent exhibit. It was a large and irregularly shaped room, with crisp teal wallpaper to contrast the gilded frames and sumptuously attired subjects displayed within them. There were a lot of visitors ambling along the walls admiring the works, but Yeonjun found what he was looking for in a quiet corner. He sat down on a bench facing a portrait of a woman wearing a striking black dress. 

“Yeonjun,” greeted the other person sitting on it. 

“Enjoying the exhibit, Director?” 

“Very much so.” Bang Sihyuk set aside a large leather-bound sketchbook on the bench between them. Yeonjun glanced down at it. With light strokes he had approximated the woman’s elegant posture, the two textures of her dress, distinguishable as black velvet and satin. Contrasted the way light illuminated the fabrics differently. There was a sheen to them that Yeonjun found admirable. “You did an excellent job last night,” said Bang. “The client is very pleased with the level of data recovered, and so cleanly. Not a hair out of place.” 

“My pleasure.” Yeonjun crossed and then uncrossed his legs. It hadn’t been an easy one, and he would be nursing a strained calf muscle for a few days as proof. He waited for the older man to continue; agency directors don’t fly out just to commend their agents for a job well done. But Yeonjun could not guess his true purpose. 

“What do you think was in her head?” The director asked, pointing forward with his chin. “ _Madame X_ , that’s the portrait’s name. In her day, she was called a professional beauty.”

Yeonjun pursed his lips outward. He was no great lover of art. He could admire the occasional landscape painting, but rarely dwelled. A portrait was a snapshot of someone else’s past, if one had the time and patience and skill for it. That held no meaning to him. Still, he gave it a willing try. The woman’s face was depicted in profile, with dark and thick-lashed eyes staring off to the side. Her dress was the most brazen shown in all the paintings in the room; it displayed with shocking clarity the clean white of her arms and décolletage. There was no guile behind her jeweled shoulder straps. The cut of the bodice drew the eye naturally down to the devastating tuck of her waist, yet there was little sensuality to the painting. The severity of the dress and the pose hid nothing, but neither did it give. 

“I don’t know,” Yeonjun said honestly.

“She was an American woman who married a wealthy French banker. They both had affairs, of course, but that wasn’t a problem to their marriage at all. Until this painting came out. The immodesty of it, and the implications, were suddenly bared to all of Parisian society.” Director Bang turned his head to look at Yeonjun directly. “There are things that can’t be taken back when infidelity is made plain to the world. Hm?” 

Yeonjun stared back, unsure. 

Bang stood up from the bench, fastening the buttons of his wool coat. “You really should develop an appreciation for the arts, Yeonjun. It can be very revealing.” He looked back at _Madame X_. “In that moment when she was posing for Sargent, she was complacent in her ignorance. She had yet to know the repercussions that would follow.” 

With a pat on Yeonjun’s shoulder, Bang walked away. He left behind his sketchbook.

On the flight home, Yeonjun would think back to the director’s words again and again as he flipped through the pages of the sketchbook with a whisky in hand. 

_Infidelity_ , Bang had called it. 

Yeonjun didn’t know if that was the word he would’ve used. But if pressed, he had to admit he couldn’t think of better for how he felt. What he was seeing in his little privacy partitioned first-class cabin seat was inarguable. 

Soobin, photographed in places he shouldn’t have access to. Soobin, walking and talking with people who were known entities in international espionage circles. Soobin, lying belly-down on a rooftop in Dar es Salaam, training a rifle shot on a would-be informant to the EU Security Commission. Yeonjun recognized the informant, because he had been the one to break them out of a Sri Lankan prison two months prior to the date tagged on the photo.

Soobin. His husband of four years. 

Yeonjun downed three fingers of Glenlivet, and motioned to the flight attendant for more. 

Tucked into a pocket on the inside cover of the sketchbook was a chip. Yeonjun inserted it into his laptop, and brought up a directory containing a terabyte of data. There were photos, videos, timelines, other corroborative documents. Choi Soobin was a special agent for national security, recruited while a student at Columbia. He had successfully completed seventy-eight field missions and forty-three eliminations. Scanning through the targets, Yeonjun recognized nearly all the names for one reason or another. 

Their marriage certificate was in its own separate folder. Wooyoung and Taehyun were their witnesses; Yeonjun had never asked many questions about Soobin’s family, because he didn’t want to be asked in return. An idiotic oversight, he realized now. There were so many signs. Yeonjun stared at his and Soobin’s signatures on the certificate for a few seconds before closing out. 

Most urgently, files on the chip indicated that Soobin was now in possession of The List. The list that, with the right decryption key, would reveal the name and the cover of every agent Yeonjun worked with across the world. And his own as well. Once that came out it would be open season for him, for Wooyoung and San and Changbin and the director. It would be a blow to the delicate balance of global geopolitical stability that they served.

The directive could not be more clear: eliminate Soobin before he got the key. And definitely eliminate Soobin if he already had the key. 

Either way, Yeonjun knew that as soon as he stepped off the plane his marriage was over. He lowered his seat into a fully horizontal position, and spent the rest of the flight fitfully sleeping off the liquor. 

The late afternoon sun was strong, and their west-facing front door blazing hot as Yeonjun let himself in. But once inside, the house was cool and quiet. Yeonjun took off his sunglasses and peered down the hall. 

“Babe?” he called out. “I’m back.” 

The double French doors of the study opened and Soobin came out. He was wearing his typical office clothes, sans suit jacket: a pair of grey trousers cut at the right length to highlight those long legs, and a fitted dress shirt with French cuffs. The shirt was ecru and just the perfect creaminess. Its top two buttons were undone to leave a tantalizing slice of collarbone visible. He must’ve been called into the office that day, Yeonjun thought. 

Soobin smiled as he walked down the hall, rolling up his sleeves. His forearms were pale, the wrists thick. 

“Welcome home,” he said, leaning in for a kiss. 

A touch of tangerine and mint; Soobin must’ve gotten into the bar cart after work. Yeonjun pulled back, licking his lips. 

_That’s the last one, then_ , he thought. A shame for it to be over so quick. 

“Uh oh,” Soobin murmured. His hand tipped up Yeonjun’s chin, appraising. “That felt a little scratchy. Didn’t have time for a shave before leaving London?” 

“Afraid not,” said Yeonjun, looking at his face closely. “It was a busy trip.” 

“Let me fix that for you, then.” 

Yeonjun let Soobin lead him by the hand into their bathroom. Soobin pushed him down gently onto the chair in front of the built-in vanity. He filled a bowl with warm water, and laid out the tools methodically: oils, shaving gel, a straight razor. 

“We haven’t done this in a while, have we?” Yeonjun said as Soobin wiped his face with a hot towel. It felt good after the long flight. He didn’t let himself relax into it too much. 

“Electric’s just easier for everyday,” Soobin agreed easily. “But nothing says special occasion like a naked blade, hm?” He rubbed the oil between his palms, warming it up. 

It reminded Yeonjun of– another kind of prep, and he felt his breath come a little faster. Soobin applied the oil to Yeonjun’s face with his huge hands, softening the skin. It smelled of a limoncello island honeymoon, like dreamy citrus flowers in bloom on Capri. Then came a layer of the shaving gel, cool and slick. 

“Hold still, now,” Soobin purred. He held the razor at a thirty degree angle, its edge gleaming wickedly. 

Yeonjun wondered if it had been sharpened in anticipation of his return. Soobin’s warm palm cradled his cheek, and his thumb pulled lightly at Yeonjun’s cheek to keep the skin taut. He drew the razor down starting from the left sideburn in one smooth stroke. Yeonjun sat frozen to the chair, eyes glued to Soobin’s face. He was quiet and focused, brows drawn together just slightly as he moved the blade in light, quick movements over Yeonjun’s face. The picture of calm and control. 

Too controlled? Yeonjun felt a flicker of embarrassment to realize that he wasn’t sure. He was looking at a new person, this man he married but didn’t really know at all. What Yeonjun understood was that he, the man and the agent, had experienced a years-long systems failure in regards to his husband. None of his finely tuned gauges worked as they should around him.

Soobin’s steadiness had always been attractive to him. He was rarely ruffled beyond mild annoyance; in four years Yeonjun could only remember a small handful of occasions he’d shown true anger. He was thoughtful, careful in both word and action. 

Yeonjun could not imagine a more worthy adversary. It would’ve been thrilling to him, if it weren’t so terrifying. 

“You’re so tense,” Soobin murmured. “Relax.”

He dipped the razor into the bowl of water, rinsing it off. Then he lowered himself onto his knees in the space between Yeonjun’s parted legs, his cupid’s bow curved up even more than usual in concentration. Yeonjun could feel the heat of him through the soft cotton of his pants. He could smell, too, the aperitif on his breath. When Soobin held his jaw in place, the tip of his thumb dipped into the corner of Yeonjun’s open mouth. His skin was warm. Yeonjun closed his lips around it with a low hum. 

“Stay. Still,” Soobin whispered, though he smiled.

He held the blade, shiny and wet, to the base of Yeonjun’s neck. Far lower than it needed to be for a shave. Yeonjun could feel the way each arterial pulse seemed to push his skin up into the blade by a millimeter.

Finally. There was something in Soobin’s eyes that Yeonjun recognized absolutely– an instinct he had never seen before on his husband’s face. It amazed him to think how well Soobin had masked himself. But Yeonjun knew it intimately as soon as he’d glimpsed it. His hand flew up to catch Soobin’s wrist like a trap closing around a songbird. 

Soobin laughed. “What’s the matter? Don’t you trust me?” 

Yeonjun met his eyes. He knew it was like looking into a reflection. Two faces, with the same thought behind them. In that moment they both had their answer. 

Yeonjun kicked out, letting Soobin’s forward motion propel him backwards, the edge of the razor so tight to his throat that he could feel it cut skin. The chair toppled over, and Yeonjun rolled off to the side before Soobin’s foot smashed into the back of the chair where his head was. Yeonjun swept his leg easily and Soobin went down. 

They tussled as Yeonjun clambered on top of him, reaching for the hand still clutching the razor blade. “Come on, baby,” he panted. “Give that to me, hm?” 

Soobin’s eyes narrowed; his entire expression had rearranged itself. His free fist swung up in a tremendous left hook that Yeonjun only narrowly avoided by leaning back. The shift in his center of gravity gave Soobin the opportunity to buck him off entirely with a grunt. Yeonjun grabbed for his leg but missed, and Soobin scrambled to his feet, running out of the bathroom. 

Yeonjun stood up and threw off his oversized hoodie. Underneath, he wore a leather cross harness with a small handgun on the left side, a sleek black 9mm with a dermal scan that responded to his palm only. He unholstered it as he rushed to give chase, and the familiar grip was its own small comfort. 

Yeonjun peered around the door just in time to glimpse Soobin’s pant leg disappearing around the corner. 

“You’re a fucking idiot, Choi,” he whispered. That short little scuffle on the bathroom floor had confirmed beyond a doubt what he’d read on the plane ride over: Soobin knew how to use his body at least as well as Yeonjun himself. There was no more time for paralyzed incredulity, or sentiment.

The main hallway of their house was lined with photographs from their life in the past four years– vacations and holidays and parties. Yeonjun pointedly kept his eyes off the walls as he stalked towards the kitchen. 

A foot swung out from around the corner, catching Yeonjun by surprise and sending the gun spinning out of his hands. Then he clocked the butt of a rifle flying towards his head. Yeonjun quickly turned his body to the side, watched as Soobin smashed the end of the rifle past him into a framed photo on the wall. 

It was a photo from their wedding: slim-cut Saint Laurent tuxes, blinding white, with peonies and blush roses in their respective boutonnieres. Yeonjun looked ecstatic as he beamed a megawatt smile at the camera. Soobin wasn’t looking at the camera at all, or at their guests, or at the piece of cake in his hand; his whole body was turned to stare at Yeonjun. It was their favorite portrait from that day, the one they’d sent out on their “thank you for coming” cards afterwards. 

Now, ruined.

Yeonjun glared at him. “Fucking really? You _had_ to smash that one?” 

“You were standing right there!” Soobin said as if in perfect justification. His eyes flickered to Yeonjun’s. For a moment he looked almost guilty. Then it passed when he realized his gun was lodged through the portrait into the wall itself. He struggled to yank it back out.

Yeonjun kicked it from below, sending the rifle up to smack Soobin on the chin and knock him onto his ass, winded. 

Inside their never-used chimney was a pump action shotgun, which Yeonjun had placed there specifically for emergencies. Now, he ran into the living room and slid onto his knees, feeling up the grimy chimney shaft until his hand closed upon its long dusty muzzle. Yeonjun was more than proficient with three dozen kinds of firearms, but this was a particular favorite. 

As he stuffed handfuls of shells into his pockets, he heard Soobin recover and scramble to his feet. Yeonjun glanced over his shoulder.

"That's a big gun,” said Soobin conversationally, lining up his now-freed rifle. "Too bad mine's bigger." 

Yeonjun couldn’t help a laugh. The part of him that loved bad jokes was delighted. "You know size isn't everything, don't you, honey? After four years of marriage, I certainly do."

"Please. As if I've ever left _you_ unsatisfied." 

A bullet lodged itself into the cabinet behind where Yeonjun's head was half a second ago. “Acting is most of my job, baby. And you bet I’m good at it,” Yeonjun yelled, dodging into their kitchen with a forward roll. Shots sprayed over his head, sending bits of glass and splinters of wood flying everywhere. He crouched against the island counter, feeding shells into the magazine of his shotgun as broken parts of their kitchen fell all around him.

“I’m a good actor too,” Soobin called out. “Bet you never knew I hated your cooking, did you?” 

“Motherfucker.” Yeonjun’s arm shot up to grab one of his chef knives off their hanging magnetic board. They were an anniversary present from last year; the irony was not lost on him. 

“Don’t tell me you’re literally bringing a knife to a gun fight!” Soobin said, sounding closer now. “That would be a disappointing end to our marriage. But poetic.” 

“Of course not,” Yeonjun purred. He listened for half a second, then stood and swung his shotgun into position with a practiced arc. Walking forward, he fired off two quick rounds in the direction of Soobin’s footsteps. They hit the cherrywood flooring between the kitchen and the living room, bursting and sending fragments of wood flying as Soobin threw himself to the side. “I’m bringing both,” Yeonjun yelled as he sent his Messermeister meat cleaver soaring. It sliced through the air, just barely clipping the top of Soobin’s left arm as he leapt over their sofa, and landed with a metallic crunch right into their 105” flatscreen. 

Soobin glared at him over the top of their sea foam green couch cushions. “After you made me buy and return not one, not two, but three increasingly larger TVs? That’s how you’re gonna treat it?” A growing blotch of red appeared high up on his sleeve where he’d been cut. 

Yeonjun shrugged. Who wanted to watch an embarrassing number of heterosexual romcoms and bad holiday movies on a tiny screen? Couldn’t be him. “Don’t bleed out all over my sofa,” he said, reloading with a quick pump. “That fabric stains like nobody’s business.” 

“Bossy asshole.” Soobin stood up, unbuttoning his dress shirt and pulling it off. There was a damp ring around the neckline of his undershirt. 

Yeonjun flashed back to all the times Soobin begged out of going to the gym with him. There were the usual excuses: he didn't like to move a lot, he was tired from work, the gyms never sanitized properly. Yet, and Yeonjun knew this intimately, Soobin's body had always been at odds with that of someone who hated exercise. How lucky, Yeonjun had always thought of himself, to have such a husband. 

“You love it when I’m bossy,” he said, eyeing the sweaty sheen of Soobin’s arms. His forearms had always been thick and veiny for his build. 

“I tolerate it,” Soobin corrected, walking around the sofa toward him. “Now, are you going to shoot me or what?” 

Yeonjun smiled, hoisting his shotgun into position. “All you had to do was ask, baby.” 

_“Alright, then. I’m going to ask you,” Soobin was saying. “Do you want to get married?”_

_Yeonjun barked out a laugh. He flicked a bit of mint leaf off the rim of his mimosa. He still had the taste of pomegranate bitters in his mouth. “What, just like that?”_

_“Just like that.” Soobin leaned back in his chair, looking relaxed. Certain._

_Yeonjun sobered quickly. “We’ve only known each other a few months,” he said carefully._

_They’d spent the last half year chasing each other around the globe, meeting up in exotic locations for a few days at a time whenever they could between work trips. Soobin’s North African oil contacts had hooked them up with this three-story private riad at the Marrakech Royal Mansour; they’d been here for a week already, sipping espresso on the balcony in the mornings, then back to messing around in bed. Straggling out into the city for a few hours in the afternoon, or day trips to Chefchaouen and up into the Atlas Mountains. A shared rosewater bath before eating tajine and orange blossom cakes on the patio as the sun set. At night, they fucked on the roof terrace as the universe bloomed over the desert around them. It was the most sex Yeonjun had ever had, and the most fun as well._

_He thought maybe he could be in love._

_“Don’t you feel you know me better than some people in your life who you’ve known for years, though?” Soobin asked._

_He did._

_Soobin smiled. On the side of his neck, too high to be hidden by anything but a turtleneck, a hickey was darkening nicely; Yeonjun was rather proud of it. Here in the arid heat, everyone would see._

_“You know everything about me that’s worth knowing. So say yes,” said Soobin._

“I really wish I’d known before I said yes,” Yeonjun sighed, finger on the trigger of his shotgun.

“That street goes both ways,” Soobin agreed calmly. 

He was right in front of Yeonjun now, point-blank. There was a moment that could change their lives, or end it. Here, in the living room of their home, he felt the weight of a marriage and a lifetime in his hands. 

Yeonjun hesitated. 

Soobin did not. 

He leapt forward, grabbing the pump action barrel and pointing it up. Yeonjun’s finger squeezed down twice on impulse; the incendiary shot blew two basketball sized holes in the ceiling and showered bits of white plaster all over the room. They wrestled for the shotgun, shoving and pulling, until they toppled over the velvet sofa and landed on their walnut coffee table, smashing it to pieces beneath them. The gun spun away uselessly, clattering ten feet away from where they lay. 

“When we met in Budapest,” Yeonjun gasped, dazed. He thought he might’ve given his head a good crack against the floor. “The explosion at Fisherman’s Bastion–“ 

“That was me,” Soobin confirmed with a wheeze. He had splinters of reclaimed wood all over his hair.

“Bastard.” Yeonjun thought of that first morning, when he had looked at Soobin and seen a fresh thing, a treasure picked up by luck. Now he knew they must’ve crossed the same bridge at the same time, before making eyes at each other within the same bar they’d chosen to hunker down in. That could still be called luck, he supposed bitterly. 

They rolled away from each other, panting. Yeonjun’s hand felt for the bottom of his pant leg; beneath the fabric, his fingers closed over the hard textured handle of his serrated knife. He yanked it out of its sheath, and, ignoring the painful pull of his calf muscle, swayed to his feet. 

Soobin did the same and put his hands up. Blood from his cut ran down in a thin line over the muscles of his bicep. 

“Baby…” Yeonjun said, warningly. His palm felt sweaty against the knife handle as he switched to an overhand grip. 

Soobin glared. “ _Don’t_ call me that.” A ham-sized fist flew towards Yeonjun’s freshly shaved left jaw. 

What surprised Yeonjun was Soobin’s foresight. If he feinted left and slashed at a shoulder, Soobin was already to his right, aiming a kick at a kneecap. When he ducked and tried to sweep Soobin onto his ass again, Soobin dodged and grabbed him by the hair, swinging them both around, yelling, until they crashed through the glass double doors of the study. Yeonjun thought he could be the stronger and swifter one, but somehow he could not get the better of Soobin. 

Still, Soobin could not get the better of him either. Not even when Yeonjun picked up Soobin’s air plants from their holders, and threw them at his head one by one until, enraged, Soobin pinned him down onto the desk. 

“My caput medusas!” Soobin snarled through gritted teeth. He clutched at the knife handle, trying to rip it from Yeonjun’s grip. “They _just_ bloomed.”

Yeonjun wriggled beneath him, then cracked his elbow against Soobin’s cheek, hard, enough to have him fall backwards. In the corner of his eye, he saw Soobin grab something small and dark off the floor. It was Yeonjun’s handgun. 

Soobin leveled it at him. Yeonjun raised his knife to throwing height. 

“Just tell me,” he said. “We can be honest with each other now, at the end. Was I your mark?”

“No.” Soobin blinked once, twice, slowly. “I thought I was yours.” 

Yeonjun swallowed. “I never suspected you.” 

“… Neither did I.” 

The gun was steady in Soobin’s hold. Yeonjun stared down the muzzle of it. He’d never seen it from the other side. Without looking, he tossed aside his knife. 

“Alright then,” Yeonjun whispered. “You should do what you have to.”

Soobin let out a short, harsh exhale like he could no longer control his breathing. There was a wet glimmer on the inside corner of his eyes. “Goodbye, Yeonjun.” 

His finger squeezed the trigger. An empty _click_ came from the gun, but no bullet. Soobin stared at it, then pointed it at the floor by his feet and pulled the trigger once more. Again, nothing happened. He looked up. 

“The handle has a biometric scan that only responds to me,” said Yeonjun, hollowly. “You were really going to shoot me.” Suddenly, he was very tired. It was hard to think about what had just happened, what was happening still. 

Soobin’s face twisted into something wild and furious. He crossed the distance between them in two huge strides, and grabbed Yeonjun’s hand, wrapping it around the gun’s grip. A small green light on top of the hammer lit up indicating that the safety was deactivated. Yeonjun tried to pull away, but Soobin held him there with an unbreakable grasp, and pointed the muzzle below his own chin. 

“If I can’t, you should,” he grit out. “Yeonjun! End it.”

Yeonjun could feel both their arms trembling. He couldn’t speak, and he would not move. Soobin shook him, but his finger did not press down on Yeonjun’s over the trigger. 

“We don’t have to do this,” Yeonjun said, voice cracking. “We don’t!” And suddenly he found himself believing his own words. “I don’t want to do this! Who says? Neither of us has to. Soobin–”

For several long seconds they just stared at one another, close enough to feel each other’s uneven breaths on their cheeks. There was a vivid desperation on Soobin’s face, and seeing it brought a small choked noise from Yeonjun’s throat. It was painful, how loudly his heart was beating. He thought if he weren’t being pressed against the edge of the desk like a thing with solid form that could be held, he’d simply dissolve. 

“Neither of us has to,” Soobin repeated dumbly, eyes still locked to his. 

“That’s right…” 

The hand holding Yeonjun’s against the grip released him slowly, finger by finger. Then Yeonjun opened his hand all at once without hesitation. The gun dropped to the floor. And then they were free. 

“You’re crying,” Yeonjun observed. 

“You’re shaking,” Soobin replied. 

One after another they began giggling uncontrollably, with little drunken hiccups, and fell into each other’s arms with a shuddering relief so strong Yeonjun felt his knees buckle. A sharp ache bloomed in his chest, almost unbearable.

“I think,” he gasped, “I think I’m having a heart attack–“

Soobin shook his head. “That’s just your body, thrilled at being alive. I feel it too.” 

Yeonjun leaned against him, his breath coming fast and hard. “Ahh. It hurts.” 

“I know,” Soobin sniffed. He was crying more than Yeonjun had ever seen. “You really scared me.” 

“You scared _me_!” 

The hysterical giggles were back.

The crest of Soobin’s cheekbone was starting to swell; it was pink where he’d been elbowed, and would be purple by the next day. Yeonjun pressed on it with his thumb until Soobin hissed. But instead of pulling away, he leaned in and kissed Yeonjun, with feeling. 

Like it was their wedding day again.

Yeonjun grasped at him, pulled on his belt loops until their chests were flush and he had one arm around Soobin’s waist and the other around his neck. He wanted to be everywhere and touch everything. The emptiness of the post-high adrenaline surge was creeping in, and he needed to be full of something. Their mouths moved together with sloppy relief, but it wasn’t enough anymore. Soobin’s tongue down his throat wasn’t enough, not nearly. 

“We didn’t shoot up our bedroom, did we?” Yeonjun panted. 

Soobin shook his head, but one hand was already creeping downwards to pull apart the string knot at the top of Yeonjun’s sweatpants. 

“Think we can make it over there before you throw me onto the nearest surface and have your way with me?” Yeonjun said, smiling, trying to slip out from underneath those sneaky hands. 

“You can try,” said Soobin. “But I think that’s one fight you’ll lose today.” 


	3. Chapter 3

“So.” Yeonjun was perched delicately on one of their barstools, still feeling tender all over from the day before, in ways both good and bad. He watched Soobin stir elderflower liqueur into an insulated travel mug half-filled with Campari; every piece of glassware they owned had been shattered by the entire semi-automatic rifle clip Soobin sprayed into the kitchen yesterday. Yeonjun flicked a shard off the island counter, though there were countless more pieces all around them. “We need to figure out what we’re going to do now.” 

“Right. Now that we’ve decided we’re not going to kill each other.” 

Yeonjun handed him a bottle of Bombay Sapphire. Thank god for their extra stash of liquor in the garage, untouched from yesterday’s carnage. “You need some dry gin in that, darling. And we were never going to kill each other, _I_ was going to kill _you_.” 

Soobin stopped measuring out the gin to give him a look. “I don’t think that’s how things were going yesterday.” 

“Yes they were, but I’ll let you have this one, because I do love you. Would you mind adding some ice to that as well, please?” 

“Can you just go back to what you were saying before, about needing to figure out what we’re going to do now?” Soobin yanked open the door to the freezer compartment of their fridge, ignoring the bullet holes on its front and the puddle of coolant pooled below on the tile flooring. 

“Honey, I can hear you eye-rolling and I don’t appreciate it. Anyway, the obvious first step is having you hand over the encryption key.”

“Right. The encryption key that I don’t have.” 

Mercifully, Yeonjun noted that the ice trays were still intact. He got up from his barstool and walked around the island counter to his husband. “Soobin, please. After we’ve just had the mother of all couple fights? Can’t we at least be honest with each other right now?” 

“We can. And I’m telling you I don’t have it. In fact, I’m going to tell you–” Soobin plopped in one ice cube at a time so that each crackling drop into the mug emphasized his words. “It. Doesn’t. Exist.” 

“Are you going to explain, or just continue making me a cocktail the wrong way?” 

“I was told by Central Command that you had our list, and possibly the key, and that’s why you had to be taken out. And you’ve just confirmed that you were told the same by your people.” He pushed the Yeti mug into Yeonjun’s hand. “This suggests our respective employers put their heads together to plan both our executions. Drink.”

Yeonjun did, and the mix was better than he’d expected. He had been right to suggest the gin. As he took a second sip, Yeonjun thought back to what Director Bang said at the National Portrait Gallery. _Infidelity_ , was the word he’d used.

“You know, I thought they were trying to tell me that you were tricking me by leading a double-life,” Yeonjun said, flexing his leg. His right calf still hurt, and the way Soobin had tackled him yesterday until they smashed the coffee table didn’t help. Nor the way he’d been on his knees in bed last night, for that matter, but some things Yeonjun was more willing to forgive than others. “Now I realize they were talking about me. I betrayed the firm, because I married you and they found out what you are. And they weren’t sure if I already knew. They weren’t sure if I was working a double-cross, but better safe than sorry. So…” He mimed a gunshot with his hand. “ _Bang_.”

“Probably. And that goes double for me, a government agent married to a mercenary. How’s that taste, by the way?” 

Yeonjun put the mug down on a relatively clean spot on the counter. “It’s delicious, thank you. You’re not upset with me about that, are you?”

“About the drink I made you being delicious?” asked Soobin, picking it up and tossing it back like a newly minted frat house pledge. _My husband_ , Yeonjun thought proudly. 

“You know what I mean. About my being a mercenary.” 

“Well.” Soobin smacked his lips, and peered into the mug. Then he reached for the elderflower liqueur bottle again. “It did give me pause when I first found out.” 

“Is that so?”

“Yeah. It means you’ll play for any team.” 

“No. We’re a balancing act,” Yeonjun corrected, placing his palm over the opening of the liqueur bottle so Soobin couldn’t pour more of it. “We tip the scales in whatever direction is needed at the time. You’re stodgy and stuck in one attitude, serving only one master no matter what happens, or what they’ve done. Doesn’t that mean I’m more fair?” 

Soobin stared at him. “It might mean you have no loyalty,” he said quietly. “I’m devoted to one cause, one country, and its people.”

“Yes, and a dubious country at that, with dubious causes. There is no loyalty, Soobin. Your side and mine, they were both ready to throw us away. Because we got married without knowing the most important thing about each other, like idiots. But that doesn’t mean we deserve to kill or die at each other’s hands.” Yeonjun leaned into his side, eyes burning. “Either way, they designed this scenario so they’d win, and we’d lose. And I don’t intend to lose, do you?”

“… No, I don’t.” 

“My only loyalty is to you first, and then to myself,” said Yeonjun, holding his up left hand so that his wedding ring glinted in the morning light. “That’s what this means to me.” 

After a moment, Soobin raised his hand and pressed his palm to Yeonjun’s. Their rings clinked together like a soft promise. He nodded. “So how do we win?” he asked. 

“We win by denying them what they want. We win by staying alive.” Yeonjun stood up on tip-toe to press his forehead to Soobin’s.

“There’s probably people on their way here, right now. A snatch force, in case one of us is still alive. Then a crew of sweepers.” 

Yeonjun nodded. 

“Okay. That means no more messing around,” said Soobin, throwing out the contents of the mug behind his shoulder without looking. “We say goodbye to everything and everyone. And let nothing get in our way.” 

“Right. Pass me my shotgun, would you, honey?” 

Soobin flipped it up from the ground with the toe of his boot, then tossed it into Yeonjun’s waiting hands. Yeonjun primed it with two quick pumps and a smile. 

“Still got some fight left in you?” he asked his husband. 

“Plenty,” said Soobin. He looked it too, swollen cheekbone and bandaged bicep notwithstanding. 

“Good. Let’s keep each other alive then.” 

The road in front was a bare dirt path, hardly enough to be called a road at all, snaking for miles and miles into the distance. Somewhere ahead it would meet the mountains that crossed the horizon, and then that path would take them up into those high peaks. To the rim of the world. 

Yeonjun pushed his sunglasses higher onto his nose bridge. At this elevation the sun’s rays were stronger and more piercing, and he needed every bit of protection against it so he could see. Almost everything was a danger. The sharpness of the rocks along the barely traveled path they followed had already shredded two tires, and besides gigantic potholes, thick pools of mud, and high water, there were also wild animals. 

Of course, the remoteness of the area was both its biggest danger as well as its greatest protection. 

Yeonjun glanced at Soobin sleeping in the passenger seat, his head nearly tilted out the open window, upper and lower lips slightly apart. He smiled at the sight. Soobin was having a bit more trouble adjusting to the altitude than Yeonjun. They kept a careful eye on the altimeter taped to the dashboard of the truck; each fifteen hundred foot increase in elevation was followed by a full day of rest. They couldn’t risk getting altitude sickness, not when any serious medical help was days away. And needing medical assistance attracted unwanted attention. 

There had been a discussion two weeks ago, shortly after they left the house. They wouldn’t be taking their chances around strangers if at all possible. They would live, or die, out here on their own. 

Yeonjun kept driving on, and up. 

Soobin shook himself awake a few hours later, blinking. “How long was I out?” he mumbled.

“Not long.” 

“How long?” Soobin repeated.

“Not even two hours,” Yeonjun lied.

“Let me take over now. You should rest too.” 

“No,” said Yeonjun, tapping his spent cigarette on the edge of the window so the ash fluttered away into the wind. “I’m okay.” 

“Yeonjun, it’s been hours.” 

“Babe, don’t take this the wrong way. But you drive like a maniac.”

Soobin stared at him. “How am I _not_ supposed to take that the wrong way?” 

“By remembering that your BMW spent more time at the dentist’s than on the road.” Yeonjun deftly maneuvered the car around a sunken crater the size of their living room back in Redondo Beach. “Don’t argue with me, I saw all those repair charges in our joint checking account. Let me be the getaway driver and, you know, you can be the sexy lookout. Just warn me if you spot a sniper aiming my way.” 

“Or maybe I won’t warn you,” grumbled Soobin. Nonetheless he scanned the vast landscape beyond the confines of their truck. “Looks exactly like it did when I fell asleep,” he said. “Nothing feels like it’s gotten any closer. This land is so big.” 

“It’s endless,” Yeonjun agreed. “Beautiful.” 

He had been to a lot of places around the world. If he had a singular passport like a regular civilian, it would’ve been padded multiple times over with extra sheets to carry all the stamps. But there was a mystical quality to this place that he had not experienced before. The snowmelt off of these mountains fed into some of the largest rivers on Earth: the Yangtze, the Mekong, and the Yellow. Water and life for over a billion people. That had to be a good sign, Yeonjun thought, that it could sustain two more. 

They kept driving until dusk, and at that point Yeonjun pulled off the road to the middle of a calm, grassy field. They checked on the two motorbikes strapped to the top of the truck and then ate, without fuss and without fire, before stuffing themselves into the backseat. It was a cramped space, barely enough room for all their limbs if they folded their bodies together just the right way, but it was shelter from the cold night. 

Yeonjun shifted over him until he was straddling Soobin’s lap; he had to hunch forward so that his head didn’t scrape the top of the cab. “Hi, baby,” he cooed, wrapping his lips around Soobin’s earlobe. 

“Hey,” Soobin breathed. “Come here.” 

He tilted Yeonjun’s chin, let their mouths fit together with a slow, bruising familiarity. Soobin’s bottom lip was soft, almost gummy. Yeonjun pulled on it with his teeth to let him know he was serious. Soobin retaliated by yanking their hips close together, and it took no time at all for Yeonjun to realize he was hard, ripe for it like summer fruit. 

“You drove all day,” Soobin murmured. “Not too tired to be doing this?” 

Yeonjun shook his head. No. 

They had never been a fight-and-then-fuck kind of couple before now. In the beginning when times were good, they were very good. Yeonjun had once feasted before the famine of the last few years, and he could still remember what that felt like. 

It was feeling like that again, now. Like he was married to someone he wanted to be touching all the time. Like there was no distance too far to travel, and nobody whose head he wouldn’t put a bullet through for him. Now he knew Soobin would do the same. And did, a few days ago in Bursa. It had taken the agency that long to find them and send people, a thing which Yeonjun felt rather proud of, except for the fact that being found at all meant somebody had to die. 

Well, as long as that somebody wasn’t either of them. 

“Just a couple of hitmen in love, huh?” Yeonjun sighed, popping open the buttons on Soobin’s jeans. 

“Didn’t we more or less quit two weeks ago?” Soobin asked, arching up in his seat. The movement had Yeonjun bumping his head against the roof. “I don’t think we count as hitman anymore…” 

“Not sure running away from the world counts as quitting so much as desertion.” 

But then his hands were there inside Soobin’s pants, and there was no more talking about work, or what they left behind, for the rest of the night. 

It was another few days before they reached it.

Up on the plateau, high enough that planes didn’t fly over the area and with air so thin that most drones could not stay aloft, they arrived at their new home. It was a tiny cottage, built within the scooped valley between several craggy peaks. There was no insulation. A Buddhist monastery an hour away by motorbike was happy to trade some of the items they brought for basic necessities: bags of rice, a few chickens, three goats. Two pots and a pan. Blankets stuffed with yak wool, essential for surviving the bitter night freeze. The open offer to eat or stay in the temple sanctuary whenever they needed. 

It was a generous option but unnecessary. Yeonjun and Soobin spent their first week setting traps around the perimeter of their little valley.

Then they settled in for a long winter. 

Every night the world was just two warm bodies. Love was survival. They spent early mornings and late nights wound together, giggling into each other’s hair in the dark. Soft lips over damp skin. 

Sometimes Yeonjun looked at Soobin’s hands starting their coal fire or mixing feed for the chickens, and he remembered that he had almost ended. Those fingers had pulled a trigger pointed at him. He had been saved not by his own skills, or by Soobin’s judgment. He hadn’t been saved by love, either. Just a piece of technology, a gun that wouldn’t shoot in the wrong hands– that was why Yeonjun was still here living in this snow globe on top of the world with his husband. 

But he _was_ still here. And it was better to live in the now than to remember the past. 

Sometimes Soobin saw him looking, and looked back. But not for long, not during those moments. If you examined a thing too closely, they both understood, what you learned was anathema to moving on. A marriage like theirs required no small amount of forgetting. 

“I can’t believe there was anyone before you,” Yeonjun whispered. 

“There wasn’t, not for me,” said Soobin. 

Three years passed like this, in coldness and closeness.

One morning Yeonjun trudged outside to find Wooyoung sitting in their goat pen. 

“Hi,” he said. His hands were clasped together in their gloves, forearms resting relaxedly on his knees. Apart from a haircut, he looked as Yeonjun had last seen him. 

“Soobin!” Yeonjun yelled towards the house, already raising his shotgun. 

“Easy!” said Wooyoung, laughing and putting his hands up. “After all the effort it took me to find you, this is the greeting I get from an old friend?” 

“It’s the greeting you get when I’m not sure whether you’re here to kill us or not.” 

Wooyoung spread his hands out in pacification, “If I were here for that, would I really be sitting in goat shit, waiting for you and Soobin to wake up and come out of that shack?” 

“Cottage,” Yeonjun corrected quickly. It was an issue of pride for him, as ramshackle as the place appeared. Even here at this lonely end of the earth it was still their home. 

Soobin barreled out the front door with a carbine repeater in his hands and a long scope rifle strapped to his back. “Hi there, Wooyoung,” he greeted conversationally. 

“Hello, Soobin. Yeonjunie’s done a nice job with your hair.” 

“Yeah, you know better than most how handy he is with a blade.” Soobin turned in a slow circle, scanning the surroundings. “Didn’t happen to bring any friends along, did you?”

“I thought about it, but no. Here all alone.”

“How did you find us?” Yeonjun asked. He still had his shotgun trained on him. 

Wooyoung leaned back against the fencing. “It was in Santiago, for our second mission,” he said, looking at Yeonjun. “You were out of your mind with painkillers in that safe-house. You kept murmuring about Tibet. Escaping.” 

Yeonjun had no memory of saying that. He did, however, remember the stab wound that necessitated the drugs. His Santiago souvenir, Soobin called the scar beneath his left ribs. They’d had a lot of time for nostalgia and naming these past few years.

“Still, it took me this long to track you down without any help. You picked a good place to hide from the world,” Wooyoung continued. 

“What do you mean, without help?” asked Soobin. 

“I quit the firm.” 

“Bullshit,” said Yeonjun. His finger on the trigger was rock steady, but his bottom lip trembled. 

Wooyoung smiled. “You don’t think you’re the only people to have ever fallen in love, do you? Word got out. Nobody liked what happened to you and Soobin. Nobody wants that to happen to them. What, your boss or the government can just decide to put out a hit because you married who they say is the wrong kind of person? No way. I walked, and so did others.” 

After a moment, Yeonjun lowered his gun. Slowly. 

Soobin did not. “So why are you here, then?” he asked. 

“To let you know that you can stay up here forever, with your chickens and your frozen outdoor toilet, if you want.” Wooyoung got to his feet slowly, hands still held out. “Or you can come with me to Ulaanbaatar, and have a drink with some old friends. You’ll recognize all the faces there. And listen to our plan to return you both to civilization. It’s a pretty good one, if you’ve still got the appetite for a fight.” 

“I don’t care who else will be there or what you guys have to say, I’m not doing it if it puts him in danger,” Yeonjun declared, tilting his head in Soobin’s direction. 

But Soobin was looking at Wooyoung thoughtfully. “No more danger than I’ve been in for my entire career,” he said. 

Wooyoung looked from one of them to the other. “Just think about it. And meet us here–“ he held out a piece of paper. “–If you’re interested in what I’ve just told you.” 

Yeonjun hesitated, then stepped forward to take it from him. He gave a small nod. 

“It’s good to see you, Yeonjunie,” said Wooyoung softly. “The others… we’d all be happy to see you both again.” Then he leapt over the low fencing, and walked down the small path leading away from their little hamlet. Soobin didn’t lower his gun until Wooyoung was out of sight. 

“Look at me,” Yeonjun said. 

“I look at you all the time.” 

“Then, close your eyes.”

Soobin did, and Yeonjun kissed him. 

“Three years,” Yeonjun whispered against him. “We had three more years together than we were supposed to. You and me. Now we could have a new beginning.”

Soobin nodded. “I don’t care what we do, as long as we do it together.”

“Are you really quoting my marriage vows back to me right now?” Yeonjun laughed.

“Yes,” said Soobin. “It was a good one.” 

“You had a good one, too. What was that one line, again?”

“Don’t pretend you’ve forgotten,” Soobin said, smiling at him. “It’s your turn to quote me, now.” 

Yeonjun leaned towards him, speaking slowly. “‘I want to be your shield during the bad times, and your sword during the good. I want to give you roses when you want them, and helping hands when you need them.’”

“Yes, that was it.” Soobin held his hands out. “Here they are, then.” 

Yeonjun reached for him, and took them into his own. 

**Author's Note:**

> ahh! this is the first fic/fandom event i've participated in for a looooong time! this was only the second thing i ever started writing for txt, and i've been slowly chipping away at it for the past half year. it's been hard to sit with it for so many months, but i'm pleased with how it's turned out. and i'm proud of myself for hitting the 10k minimum set for txtbb! this was very different from my other work, but it's been enormously fun to write married spies yeonbin. thank you so much to my friends for listening to me whine about how to write the big fight scene, my very suspicious google search history looking up shotgun schematics, tearing my hair out over the big dinner scene, etc 😂 
> 
> most of all, i'm THRILLED that [ria/pinksense](https://twitter.com/tapiocapeol) signed up to be my artist! please check out [her awesome artwork](https://twitter.com/txtbigbang/status/1363660794681032711?s=20) for the shaving scene of this fic, and also her submission for txtbb, it's an adorable beomjun roadtrip fic 🥺 
> 
> you can find me here: [twt](https://twitter.com/croptopyeonbin)


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